As a Jewish Coloradan, I Am Afraid

I am a Coloradan. Before that though, I am a Jew. An unapologetic, visible Jew. Today those two identities seem to be in conflict.

Yesterday, Melat Kiros, the young democratic socialist who called the slaughter of 1,200 of my brothers and sisters on October 7 "inevitable," is now the Democratic nominee for Colorado's 1st Congressional District. In a district that leans as heavily blue as the Israeli flag (the irony is not lost on me), she will almost certainly be the next person to represent me in the United States Congress.

That is scary for me and my community.

Every day, when I walk out the door, there is nothing ambiguous about who I am or what I believe. With my yarmulka on my head it is clear that I am Jewish. Today that feels a little more frightening.

The starkest difference between her and Diana DeGette was Israel. Support for Israel defined this campaign.

With my yarmulka on my head it is clear that I am Jewish. Today that feels a little more frightening.

I obviously disagree with Melat Kiros. I don’t think she is evil. My tradition teaches us to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I do think that she is misguided. From her statements it seems clear that she has never been to Israel and has very little if any first-hand knowledge of a topic that won her this election. Like many young people in our nation, she has absorbed a framework so distorted by a biased narrative that she cannot see the simple truth.

What I cannot stop thinking about is the people who voted for her. The neighbors, the people standing next to me waiting to check out at the grocery store, my doctor, the person in the car next to me at the light. These are the people who looked at everything she said and decided that it was acceptable, or worse, that it was right.

They heard her claim that the rape, kidnapping, and butchering of my brothers and sisters on October 7 was "inevitable," just a form of resistance. They know that she was fired from a law firm for antisemitic views. They watched as she responded to the murder of an 82-year-old Jewish woman, Karen Diamond, and injury of over a dozen people at the Boulder firebombing refusing to call it an act of antisemitism. They still chose her to represent them.

I assume that if I were to have a conversation with Kiros, she would defend herself by saying, "I am not antisemitic. I am anti-Israel." But this language has life and death consequences for real people. The data shows that anti-Israel sentiment leads directly to acts of violence against Jewish people thousands of miles away from Israel.

According to the ADL's 2025 audit, anti-Israel protests were the site of 856 antisemitic incidents in a single year. Protesters openly displayed support for violence against the Jewish community, glorified Hamas and Hezbollah, and celebrated the October 7 attack.

Kiros has says Israel is an apartheid state, and that October 7 was the inevitable result of that apartheid. Her supporters repeat that term without looking at what it actually claims.

Arab citizens of Israel, roughly one fifth of the country's population, vote in Israeli elections, run for the Knesset, and currently sit in it. They serve on the Israeli Supreme Court. Arab citizens practice law, medicine, and every profession you would expect and hold the same civil rights as Jewish citizens, and are protected by the same courts. Apartheid was a legal system built specifically to deny citizenship, the vote, and basic civil rights to a racial group on the basis of race, by law. That is not what exists for Arab citizens of Israel.

What Kiros and people like her are actually pointing to is the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens do not have Israeli civil rights. That is true, but neither do I as a Jewish American citizen. This is not evidence of apartheid any more than the fact that Canadian citizens do not vote in American elections or serve on the U.S. Supreme Court is evidence that America practices apartheid against Canada. Citizenship confers rights. You can believe Israel's policies in the West Bank are wrong, unjust, or counterproductive. Plenty of Israelis believe that. But collapsing that argument into "apartheid," a word with a specific and horrifying legal meaning, is plain wrong.

In her victory speech, Kiros said one of her goals is to “end the genocide in Palestine.” The inaccurate and misleading term "genocide" that she purposely uses is meant specifically to demonize the State of Israel. This leads to hatred of and violence against Jewish People around the world.

As the ADL writes, “Regardless of how the term is applied, the accusation is aimed at convincing the general-public that Israel is guilty of committing the most awful of human atrocities. Once levied, these charges tend to affect perception and confuse lay individuals, regardless of their falsity.”

Anti-Israel movements do not stay contained to the political argument. They have a way of fueling physical threats and attacks.

And that is my point. The lay individuals, the supporters at the rallies aren’t looking into the truth of these claims. They are absorbing it like a sponge in the name of liberalism and standing up for the oppressed. And data shows that this leads to attacks of my community.

Anti-Israel movements do not stay contained to the political argument. They have a way of fueling physical threats and attacks.

That’s what I am thinking about this morning as I drop my kids off at camp. It’s the quiet, unnerving fear that I feel as I pass someone on the sidewalk and wonder what they see when they look at me and my kippah and if they have decided, consciously or not, that my existence as a Jew is unwelcome.